Sacrifice in primitive religions: main features and peculiarities. (original) (raw)

The Role of Sacrifice in the Secular Age

Religions, 2021

This text is the editorial of the Special Issue published by Religions review entitled "The Role of Sacrifice in the Secular Age". It briefly analyzes the evolution and the state of play of sacrifice, and introduces the several papers that conform this work.

Sacrifice/Human Sacrifice in Religious Traditions

The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, 2013

This chapter presents a survey of several contemporary, major definitions of sacrifice as forms of symbolic and performative violence. A modest discussion of patterns in the sacrifices of animals and their symbols in various traditions is reported. The chapter then turns to an interpretation of the more troubling topic of actual human sacrifices in various cultures. The role of emotion and aggression in sacrifice appears in a number of Greek rituals and cultural expressions. Human sacrifice has been practiced in Mesoamerica for over 1500 years. It has increased, and the amount of territory controlled in Mesoamerica has increasingly expounded, assuring a tremendous growth in tributary payments to the capital and its royal families. The Mesoamerican religious traditions did not only seek substitutes for human “debt payments” or sublimate in rituals their aggressive drives toward humans in ways that eliminated human sacrifice, as many other peoples did.

Diversity of Sacrifice: Form and function of Sacrificial Practices in the Ancient World and Beyond. 2016. Table of Contents.

Explores sacrificial practices across a range of contexts from prehistory to the present. The term "sacrifice" belies what is a complex and varied transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon. Bringing together scholars from such diverse fields as anthropology, archaeology, epigraphy, literature, and theology, Diversity of Sacrifice explores sacrificial practices across a range of contexts from prehistory to the present. Incorporating theory, material culture, and textual evidence, the volume seeks to consider new and divergent data related to contexts of sacrifice that can help broaden our field of vision while raising new questions. The essays contributed here move beyond reductive and simple explanations to explore complex areas of social interaction. Sacrifice plays a key role in the overlapping sacred and secular spheres for a number of societies in the past and present. How religious beliefs and practices can be integral parts of life on individual and community levels is of fundamental importance to understanding the past and present. In addition to aiding scholarly research, Diversity of Sacrifice enables students to explore this rich theme across Europe and the Mediterranean with clear discussions of theory and data.

Ancient Philosophers on Sacrifice and the Polis Religion

Animal Sacrifice in Ancient World. Proceedings of the Second and Third Workshops on Sacrifice (Kraków 10–12.02.2017, Changchun 22–24.09.2017), 2019

In this paper I consider the attitude towards sacrificial rituals of the Pythagoreans, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans. I begin by analyzing selected texts in which philosophers discuss sacrifice as part of polis religion. I consider the nature of the ritual discussed and the author's attitude towards it. Next, I analyze the 'theological' views of these philosophers, in particular their outlook on the question of the gods' existence, the nature of the god(s), and the relation of the god(s) to human beings. In the final section I draw some conclusions by comparing these two sets of evidence.

The Problem Field of the Anthropology of Sacrifice: A Research Experience

Философские науки, 2022

Третья группа проблем связана со сферой праксиса в классическом его понимании, т.е. представляет собой вопросы, касающиеся политических, экономических и этических импликаций, связанных с феноменом жертвы и аналогами ритуала жертвоприношения в современных обществах. Здесь невозможно избежать соотнесения современных дискурсов и практик с архаическими прототипами, а главное-описания трансформаций и изменения проблематики антропологического смысла жертвоприношения. Поскольку современное общество погружено в медиасреду, чрезвычайно важным является обсуждение влияния последней на эти процессы. В целом антропология жертвы как исследовательский проект позволяет посмотреть на многие острейшие социальные вопросы современности под новым углом зрения. Ключевые слова: философская антропология, жертвоприношение, ритуал, сакрализация, биополитика, травма, коллективное тело. Корецкая Марина Александровна-доктор философских наук, доцент, и.о. зав. кафедрой философии и культурологии Самарского государственного медицинского университета Министерства здравоохранения Российской Федерации, профессор кафедры истории, международного права и зарубежного регионоведения Самарского филиала Московского городского педагогического университета.